A Study On The Functional Differences And The Cognitive Mechanisms Of The Chinese Topic Constructions

Topic structure is a common form of expression in conversation.Researches about topic structures mainly cover the following aspects:Defining the topic and the subject in the sentence structure;Exploring the formational mechanisms of the topic structures;Exploring the structural and functional properties of the topic structures.When it comes to the Chinese topic functions,researchers usually focus on one specific type of topic constructions or take a unitary view towards different topic constructions.This thesis focus on the three Chinese topic constructions(left-dislocated topic construction,topicalization construction.Chinese-style topic construction),and aim to discuss the differences of their information properties of the topic referents and the discourse functions.Moreover,this thesis will probe into the cognitive mechanisms and the factors that contribute to the differences of the discourse functions possessed by the three Chinese topic constructions from the perspective of cognitive construal and the interaction between subjectivity with the constructions.Based on the investigation and data analysis of the corpus,this thesis transcripts 90 series conversational materials from 13 level TV interview programs as the basic corpus and selects 525 cases of the target passage wherein 277 cases of Chinese left-dislocated constructions(hereinafter abbreviated as LDs)and 124 cases of Chinese topicalization constructions(hereinafter abbreviated as TOP)as well as 123 cases of Chinese-style topic constructions are obtained.The main research questions in this thesis are as follows:(1)What are the informational properties of the three types of topic constructions?(2)What functions of the three topic constructions can be reflected from the informational properties?(3)What are the cognitive mechanism hidden behind the structural formation and the functional differences of the constructions?This thesis adopts the research paradigm of discourse coherence based on the calculation of the anaphoricity and persistence of the referent proposed by Givon(1993).The statistics show that,in terms of the anaphoricity,the topic referent of Chinese LDs is the lowest,so as to be more inclined to the discourse-new information in conversation and it is rarely used as a general word;The topic referent of TOPs is more closely connected with the previous content,which tends to be the discourse-old information in conversation.The Chinese-style topic constructions.in general,are between the former two types,in which the topic referent,although biased to the discourse-old information,it is not as close as TOPs in the connection with the previous discourse.In terms of the persistence of the topic referents in three constructions.the Chinese LDs have a better performance in continuation,while the TOPs tend to be weaker in the following,and the Chinese-style types are still distributed among the two with an overall weak persistence in discourse.From the point of view of discourse coherence function,the thesis divides the functions into discourse content function and discourse structure function.The former one is shared by all,including citing,enumeration and background information providing.And the latter is diverse among the three constructions,in which the functions of Chinese LDs and Chinese TOPs are opposite and crossed:both of them have the discourse functions as topic-opening,topic sustaining,topic-ending and marking new information,however,the LDs are tend to open a topic but not frequently used to finish a topic,while the TOPs lean towards to end a topic but not commonly used as topic opening.Besides,the functions of Chinese-style topic constructions tend to be the topic-sustaining with more complex relationships between the topic referent and the context as well as the topic and its proposition inside this type.The main cognitive mechanism of the formation of topic constructions is the Cognitive Reference Point Model with diverse relationship between the topic referent(taken as the reference point)and the proposition clause,which marks diverse prominence of the topic referent in the constructions,and the topic prominence can influence the continuation of the topic referent.Among them,the Chinese-style type has its particularity which can be divided into five subclasses with different tightness between the topic scope and the proposition which causes the differences of topic prominence and topic persistence,therefore the information properties and the discourse functions of the Chinese-style types are always between the Chinese LDs and the TOPs.Besides,the topic prominence is also related to the informativeness of topic referents in discourse which consists of two parts:its informational properties and the markedness that marked by the pre-markers of the topic referents.The newer the information,the higher value of discussion,the stronger tendency of continuation.The higher markedness of the topic,the more attention it get and the higher continuation it tend to have.